Our First Chinese-Language Book Published

World's Edge Books & Publishing has just released its first Chinese book: Lina Mao Dickson's translation of our children's book I Drink Mommy's Milk: A Book About Mammals.  I am happy to announce that the book is now in our inventory and available for ordering through our website.  Please note that this is the Chinese-character-only edition; a bilingual edition with characters, pinyin, and English translation will be available in November 2010.

Region-Free DVD Viewing

I have just received my new iView Media Player in the mail, after a two-week wait, and can now play DVDs from France (or anywhere in the world)!  The children are now watching Thomas et ses amis (the French version of Thomas and Friends, available only in France), and they don't even seem to notice that it's in French.  Sebastian has been enamored of Thomas for about a year, although he's only seen one or two episodes in English, and it's much less flashy and hyperactive than most of the shows created for children these days, so I ordered a Thomas DVD  from Amazon.fr as soon as I ordered my multiregion DVD player.

The iView Media Player cost me 56.99 USD, including shipping, from www.samstores.com, took about 30 seconds to set up, and is working beautifully so far...

We are only watching television twice a week now, but I already have two children's films originally created in France for our next couple of viewing sessions.  I hope to wean Sebastian off Thomas and Friends and onto classic French children's films as soon as possible.  I think there must be some good African children's films in French and will start looking into that as a project for the new year.

Another Source for French Books (No Shipping Fee!)

At the end of last week Sebastian came home from Pre-K with a Scholastic book-order form in his backpack.  That brought back happy memories, for me, of tables covered in new books in front of the auditorium at Bishop Feild Elementary School in St. John's, Newfoundland.  There were two differences from my memories of twenty-five years ago in Canada: (1) I was instructed to place my order online, and (2) there wasn't a single French book in the flyer or among the other titles on the website.

I looked up the Scholastic Canada French catalogues and contacted a customer-service representative to confirm that schools in the U.S. can place orders from the Canadian catalogues.  I am excited to announce that Sebastian's teacher has agreed to set up an account with Scholastic Canada!  Thanks, Mrs. McCallion!

If you have children in a U.S. school (private schools and legal homeschools, as well as public schools, can open accounts) and you would like to be able to order French books through Scholastic Canada, ask your teacher to phone (1-800-268-3860), FAX (1-800-387-4944), or email (custserve@scholastic.ca) them the following information:

• Name of teacher and school
• The school's full mailing address
• The school's tax identification number
• The number of students in the class

An account can be opened and flyers sent out within a couple of days.  The best part?  There is no international shipping fee to pay--no shipping fee at all, in fact.

Scholastic has branches and book clubs in other countries, including China and India, and I imagine that similar arrangements may be available for parents looking for books in languages other than French.  Visit the Scholastic's international site for more information.

Chinese Edition of Breastfeeding Book to be Released

The Chinese-language edition of my book I Drink Mommy's Milk: A Book About Mammals is scheduled for release from World's Edge Books & Publishing later this month.  A bilingual (Chinese/English) edition is scheduled for release in early October.  The Chinese and bilingual editions, as well as the English edition, will be available through Amazon.com as well as through our website.

Back To School and a New Experiment

Sebastian went back to preschool yesterday and will be out of the house (and speaking only English) three full days and two half days a week until December.  Our No-Television Experiment is officially over.  So where do we go from here?  I have certainly learned that hyperactive and obnoxious popular English-language films like Toy Story and Madagascar add nothing of importance to my children's lives.  I have also learned that simply speaking to the children more and reading to them more in French and Chinese will improve my children's ability to use those languages infinitely more than buying them dozens of instructional DVDs.

I considered throwing the television set out, but in the end I decided against that; it seemed arbitrarily extreme to prevent myself from ever watching a set of lectures or a mystery on VHS, which I occasionally do.  And I would even like to let the children watch a strictly limited amount of TV--certainly not the standard English shows and not even language-learning programs that have explanations in English, but a small number of shows created for French- or Chinese-speaking children.  I have yet to find a good program in Chinese, due to my own inability to read websites in Chinese, but French-language children's shows such as the original and somewhat eccentric Passe-Partout (produced in Quebec) and the French editions of Caillou have a level of French that is just slightly above Sebastian's current comprehension level and so might help to reinforce and expand upon what he is learning with me (they are good for me, too, since they use vocabulary that I need with the kids every day).  I have decided to let the children watch two episodes (one hour) of one of these shows no more than twice a week.  Most of the other series and films at this level are on DVDs that can only be played in Europe, so I don't think I'll be tempted to go overboard with this.

And now I embark on a new journey: it is finally time to start speaking to the kids exclusively in French and Chinese when their father is at work.  Since Sebastian now has so many school hours in English, I realize that I am going to have to be more disciplined if I am going to make him truly multilingual.  And the hours when he's at school and Steve's at work will give Serena and Kai thirty hours a week of exposure to French and Chinese without any English interruptions.

I will continue to speak to them in French at least half the time when Steve is at home and to try to read mostly French (and Chinese) books to them, although I also want to encourage Sebastian's newfound interest in novels (in English) such as Stuart Little and Winnie the Pooh.  Next on his list are Misty of Chincoteague and Abel's Island, which I will read to him during our non-exclusive hours, when Daddy is home.

I have been doing most of my own reading in French, and that has been making it much easier for me to speak to the children in French.  I have found myself thinking in French part of the time, for the first time in ten or fifteen years.  In addition to a book to refresh my grammar and a book to perfect my pronunciation, I am re-reading Peter Mayle's Provence books in French translation.  I have just ordered a copy of A Wrinkle in Time (Un raccourci dans le temps) in French translation, as well as a complete set of the Spiderwick Chronicles (Les chroniques de Spiderwick), which will be fun for me to read and will also be good for the kids when they're older.

My father has just given me his enormous, multi-volume 19th-century Larousse dictionary along with an antique cabinet to keep it in, and I can't wait to get it out of storage and start using it; my thick desk-sized English/French-French/English Larousse is not sufficient anymore, and I haven't been very happy with the comprehensiveness of any of the online dictionaries that I've found so far.

The children's French has improved dramatically in the last six weeks, but their Chinese has not improved much; I am still looking for ways to improve my own Chinese so that I can speak to them in Chinese more often.  My Chinese translator Lina Mao Dickson has completed the Mandarin translation of my little book I Drink Mommy's Milk: A Book About Mammals, and we hope to have that out in Chinese-only and bilingual editions before the end of the month.  She is also working on Book I of our book-and-CD series Chinese Language for Parents and Children, which should be out later this fall.

The No-Television Experiment, Day 28

I have a hard time getting rid of books.  Actually, I have a hard time not acquiring new books constantly.  I first realized this when I was berated by my father (who has a substantial home library himself) for "collecting books" at the age of sixteen because I wanted to buy a Romanian-English dictionary from a used bookstore during a trip to India that I took with him.

For the last few years I have had to serious control my book-acquiring obsession because our apartment isn't big enough to hold any more (our self-storage unit is nearly full, too).  Now, four weeks into our No-Television Experiment, I have realized the need to be even more careful about what I acquire--and to pare down our current collection--for another reason: indiscriminate collecting is not conducive to our educational aims.  

I've recently begun to dread our visits to the local public library because I know that when Sebastian and Serena walk in through the door of the children's department they are going to be surrounded with wonderful books--nearly all in English!  I estimate that close to 99% of our library's children's collection is in English, even though about 20% of Lewiston's population is French-speaking and at least 10% speaks other languages, including a large number of Somali immigrants.  When the children are not with me, I go straight to the one mostly-French bookcase and make the majority of my selections from there.  But the children, of course, do not limit themselves to one tiny corner of the room, and they come out with twenty-nine English-language books and perhaps one or two French titles (there are only a couple of Chinese-language titles in the entire children's department) each time.

Our home library is somewhat better, with about 80% English-language titles, but I'd like to make the proportions even more balanced--about 40% English, 40% French, and 20% Chinese for now (a larger proportion of Chinese later, I hope, once I'm better able to handle Chinese characters).  This is not easy to achieve when everything that we see in local stores and at summer garage sales and library sales is in English. I have to work hard to find our French and Chinese books online, while the English ones seem to appear out of nowhere, taking up all my precious space (and my children's reading time) whenever I let my guard down.

A few days ago I did some serious weeding of English books from the kids' bookshelves.  I'm beginning to resign myself to the fact that life is too short to read every book ever printed, and although I don't censor my children's reading material (I even read a completely meaningless "Transformers" book to Sebastian once, just because he wanted to read it) I have to be selective about what I keep in the house if I want them to have time to read the best books available in Chinese, French, and English.  So I went through the children's bookshelves and donated everything in English that was badly written or illustrated, that the kids didn't like, that I didn't like (unless the kids really loved it), that was commercially written or illustrated, that we had a duplicate (in better condition) of, or that was significantly damaged (unless irreplaceable).  I brought several large boxes of books to the Salvation Army store down the road, and now we have some half-empty shelves just waiting to be filled up with French and Chinese books.  The children have discovered some treasures (in all three languages) that were previously buried under all the junk, too.

My father will be bringing some new French additions to our collection with him when he comes to Maine next month--books that I ordered from Amazon.ca and had shipped to my sister Margaret in Toronto (free Super-Saver Shipping within Canada!) and that she brought to Pennsylvania with her when she went to visit Dad and my sister Darby there.  In the meantime, I am still looking for high-quality French picture books and simple Chinese picture books and would love to hear any recommendations!

The No-Television Experiment, Day 13

The children have four good-quality recorders in their toy box, and for at least a year I've been meaning to start teaching Sebastian and Serena how to play, but since I haven't played myself since my ninth-grade year in Istanbul, I've kept putting it off.  Well, this Monday, after several hours of playing with some cardboard boxes in the back yard with Serena, Sebastian came into the living room looking for something to do.  This is the time of day when I used to say he could put on a DVD--when he seemed to have exhausted his creativity for the day and we were all a bit tired an impatient.  Since there was no TV this time (he hasn't even asked this week), he went over to the basket of books that we keep in a corner of the living-room floor and picked out a recorder book that I'd picked up at a garage sale or a thrift store on some long-forgotten weekend, brought it over to me, and said happily, "Let's play recorder!"

I've been wanting to start him on an instrument since he turned three last summer.  He's loved violin music since he was a baby, and just after this third birthday my friend Francie gave him a few lessons during a week-long visit (and again when we visited her for her wedding celebration in Newfoundland), which he adored, so last fall I embarked on a several-month-long journey to find him a teacher.  

I finally found someone who was willing to teach violin to such a young child, but Sebastian didn't respond to her like he did to Francie.  He found her intimidating and refused to try anything she suggested, hiding behind my legs and making funny faces until we decided to call it off until he was older (or, I thought to myself, until I could find him a teacher with whom he'd feel more comfortable).  I grew up playing piano and would like to teach him to play piano, too, but I don't currently have one in the house.  For now, I am happy that, because of the No-Television Experiment, we have finally started learning to play the recorder together.  

I was pretty good at the recorder as a child, by the admittedly low standards of school recorder-playing.  In my school in Istanbul, all we did in music class all year long was play the flûte à bec, and the teacher (who once got hit in the forehead by a flying piece of recorder belonging to one of my classmates) used to have me demonstrate every new piece to the class before they attempted to play in a cacophony of squeaks and squeals (I guess that says something for the quality of Canadian music education).  Okay, the competition was basically nil, but, still, I was a decent recorder player and enjoyed playing.

I found out only much later that the recorder is not just a toy instrument invented for the purpose of helping children to make lots of noise at school but a serious instrument with a long history and the capability to produce beautiful music (see Jim Phypers's recorder website for a brief historical overview and some nice recordings of recorder music to start out with).  It remains an excellent first instrument for a child because the basics are uncomplicated and because it's practically indestructible and very inexpensive to buy or replace; a high-quality instrument can be had online for $20 or less. 

Our first three days of "lessons" (all initiated by Sebastian) have been a lot of fun.  Sebastian has learned the proper method for "tongueing" and knows how to play the notes "B" and "A."  The only problem is that his hands are a bit small to cover all the holes simultaneously; perhaps a sopranino recorder (the smallest type) would work better for him until he gets a little bigger, but if I try that I will have to find a sopranino method since the notes are not the same as on a regular (soprano) recorder.  

There are six basic types of recorder: in addition to the sopranino (or descant) and soprano, which are the smallest and highest-pitched, there exist alto (or treble), tenor, bass, and contra-bass varieties.  Others, including the 8-to-9-foot-tall sub-contrabass, are less commonly played (not to mention expensive).  

I have, of course, already taught my children to say "flûte à bec."  Now that we've gotten over our first recorder-playing hurdle--getting started--I figure I might as well make this another opportunity to learn some French, which shouldn't be too hard since I had that entire year of French scholastic recorder-playing in Istanbul.  I've been trying to refresh my memory as to the relevant vocabulary, and I can already see that learning to play the recorder in French will be rich in new vocabulary for the kids.  

First there are the names of the musical notes, which do not go by the letters of the alphabet (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) as in English but use the solfège system (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do).  There will be the names of the individual fingers and of the note and rest lengths (my favourite is the quarter rest, called the "soupir," or sigh, in French).  And of course there will be lots of verbs, such as "hold," "play," "cover," "uncover," "move," "wait," "start," "repeat," and so on, most of which will be useful in other everyday conversations, too.  I am especially anxious to add more verbs to the kids' French vocabulary, since they currently know mostly nouns and set phrases.

I have found some helpful websites by searching on Google.fr (France) and Google.ca (Canada).  My favourite so far is a site called: Flûtalors from Quebec, which is nicely organized with audio demonstrations and traditional French children's songs to play with each new note that is introduced.  If anyone finds something even better (in French or another language), please feel free to post the link(s) here!

There are also a large number of recorder-method books available in French for those who would like to combine their children's musical education with a French-immersion experience (the amount of text is probably small enough to be manageable even to parents who aren't fluent speakers/readers of the language).  These vary from compilations of the same old pieces that you played on the recorder in elementary school to international compilations; methods based on African, Middle Eastern, or Celtic folk tunes; and rock and jazz methods.  Actually, I think recorder methods are one area in which there are a greater variety of books available in French than in English, although we English speakers do have Harry Potter for Recorder. 

I'm off to play some more flûte à bec.  More no-television and recorder-playing updates coming soon!

The No-Television Experiment, Day 7

Sebastian (age 4) and Serena (age 2) are having their supper at the picnic table in the backyard; they've been playing outside for hours, ever since we got home from running errands this afternoon.  Kai (7 months) is sitting on the living-room floor, playing happily by himself with a crow sounder.  The only other sound is the whirring of the fans in the living room and the kitchen.  Have I missed the television during our first TV-free week?  Not a bit.  Have the kids missed it?  Not much, as far as I can tell.

Sebastian has asked to watch TV perhaps four times during the week but without much conviction.  There hasn't even been a single "pleeeease?" when I've said no.  I didn't think it would be that easy; Sebastian is a persistent and goal-oriented kid, normally, and doesn't give up easily when he wants something--which makes me think that he doesn't really want to watch TV so much after all.

So what has he been doing instead, all week?  Well, we've been getting out of the house a lot more than usual.  Sebastian and Serena have been seeking entertainment in the backyard when they get bored with whatever they've been doing in the house, and even I've been getting out for more exercise and fresh air; when the kids start to get whiny, I'm more likely to get them all out for a walk than I was when I could count on the TV to keep them mesmerized for an hour or so before suppertime, naptime, bathtime, or storytime.

The kids have been more creative indoors, too: drawing and painting much more than usual (is it a coincidence that their drawings have suddenly gotten much more sophisticated in the last six days?), building, and inventing elaborate games of "house."  Sebastian's laziness has practically disappeared.  He's only once complained that it's too hot out, and he's been hiking happily for an hour or more at a time.  He always wants to go out when I ask him.  He even cleans up after himself with significantly less grumbling, and he doesn't get angry or grouchy as easily as he used to.  Is it my imagination, or has he actually become happier in such a short period of time?  Can television viewing really have such a strong effect on a person's whole life?

Both Sebastian and Serena have, as I'd hoped, started requesting stories during the day--reading is not just for bedtime any longer.  This has been especially beneficial for Serena, since she gets tired early in the evenings.  In the last week, she has read about three times as many stories as she did in the week before (Sebastian has read about twice as many)!  What makes me even happier is that they're both sitting through longer books and more books in French and Chinese.

As a bonus, I've somehow been getting them to bed noticeably earlier every night since we shut the TV set off.  It's easier to get them settled away for the night when you don't have to wait for a show to be over before you serve supper or put them in the bathtub, when they've already read plenty of stories during the day, and when they're actually tired because they've gotten plenty of exercise.

My concern that keeping the TV off would be bad for the children's Chinese seems to have been unfounded, too.  I no longer have to wait for the current show to be over in order to talk to them, and their brains are not filled with silly one-liners from their favorite programs.  I've noticed that we've actually been talking to each other more in French and Chinese and reciting more French and Chinese nursery rhymes and songs during the day.

My days haven't become any harder without the electronic babysitter.  Although I've been forced to pay more attention to the children, my interactions with them have been less stressful, so my energy levels have increased a bit, and, besides, I can think better without the constant chatter in the background.

I hope I continue to see improvements as the no-television experiment continues.  In the meantime, I am already fantasizing about throwing the TV set away forever (or at least locking it in a room where it can only be watched a couple of hours a week).  I haven't taken it out of the living room yet--mostly because it's too heavy for me to lift by myself--but I've been greedily eyeing the corner that it occupies, thinking about all the extra space I'd have if it were gone.

The No-Television Experiment, Day I

Sebastian, our four-year-old, has been gradually sneaking in more and more TV time every day since preschool let out for the summer in May, and to make matters worse, he's less interested than before in the educational (mostly French and Chinese) DVDs that I went through so much trouble to find for him and more interested in the loud and sarcastic Disney movies that we had planned to let him watch only once.  

At the same time (coincidence, or cause and effect?), he has become less and less inclined to exert himself: he's "too tired" to put away his toys after he plays with them, it's "too hot" to play in the backyard, and he needs to be carried because riding his bicycle is "too hard."  He wanders around the house repeating obnoxious phrases from the films such as, "You're biting my butt!" (Madagascar) to himself--and sometimes to me.  This morning, for the first time in his life, he didn't want to go out for a walk when I invited him--preferring, he explained, to stay home and watch TV.  

We went for the walk, and the television is now officially off until school starts up again after Labor Day.  Who knows?  It might even stay off longer than that--I might put it in storage or in our bedroom and bring out my grandfather's old electric organ to occupy the place of honor in the living room--but a month and a half should be long enough to show whether no TV will make a positive difference in my children's lives and behavior.

I grew up without a television set in the house until I was eleven years old, and when my parents did break down and buy one, they put it in their bedroom, where we were allowed to sit and watch it for an hour a day.  Most of the time my choice of program was Square One TV on PBS.  

Because of that lack of early exposure, I have never had much patience for television.  I have no tolerance at all for commercials and the other mindless chitchat and sensationalization that seems to occupy most of the time slots on most television channels, so I'm glad my husband hasn't insisted on getting cable.  

We do have a DVD player and a VHS player because Steve didn't want to do away with the television completely when Sebastian was born four years ago (he now watches "television" only on his computer--the news and a couple of sci-fi shows, which he downloads from the networks' websites).  As soon as Sebastian figured out what they could do--when he was less than a year old--it became a constant struggle for me to keep the set turned off most of the day.

Until this spring he watched the French and Chinese and other educational videos that I chose for him almost exclusively, but then I let him watch Stuart Little and 101 Dalmatians in French, thinking that it would be good for his French to hear more complex conversations than he had heard before.  When Steve saw that, he got him the English versions of those two movies, and then we let him watch a couple of classic Disney videos that someone had given us for free at a garage sale.  When he couldn't stand to watch those one more time, Steve got him some of the more recent animated blockbusters--Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Madagascar--and it all went downhill from there.  These films are cute enough in some ways, but I also find them loud, hyperactive, and sarcastic, as well as chock-full of gratuitous violence passing itself off as comedy (or even normality).  And of course they are all in English; every hour he spends watching them is an hour that he is not getting any exposure to French or Chinese.  I am not going to miss them much.

My one concern is that I won't be able to keep up the kids' Chinese without TV.  Since my own Chinese is very limited, I've been relying to a large extent on educational shows to teach Sebastian and Serena Chinese vocabulary and to help keep the words and phrases fresh in my own mind.  Will they end up with less exposure to Chinese over the next month and a half, or will the lack of TV time as good for their Chinese-language skills as I suspect it will be for some other aspects of their lives?  Will we, perhaps, finally get around to reading those Chinese books we have lying around, and will we find more time to actually speak with each other in Chinese?

Although he has always loved reading, Sebastian only wants to sit through stories in the evenings after supper, and I'm hoping that will change.  I want to introduce him to longer books with fewer pictures such as Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan and to substitute audiobooks for some of his former TV time.  Since last fall he has enjoyed listening to some of his favorite stories--Curious George, Madeline, The Polar Express--on tape when he goes to bed, and for the last few days we have already been listening to Winnie the Pooh on CD in the car and Little Bear on tape at home.  

It may be harder for me to find appropriate audiobooks for him in French and Chinese, since his comprehension level in both languages--and especially in Chinese--is much lower than in English.  I might have to get creative and make my own recordings for him to listen to at night and when I'm busy doing laundry or cooking supper.  That could even become a project for the whole family.

I will try to make posts on the progress of the No-Television Experiment at least once a week until school starts in September.  I'm sure there will be plenty to report!

LANGUAGE LEARNING IS NEVER WASTED, by guest blogger Francie Gow

When I was 22, I spent a year teaching English conversation classes in the French town of Armentières, nestled on the Belgian border. I had specifically asked to be sent to that region so that I could be as close as possible to my Dutch relatives.

Although I had not moved to France with the specific intention of learning Dutch, the circumstances turned out to be ideal. I only had to spend 12 hours a week in the classroom, leaving me with lots of spare time to study and listen to my new Teach Yourself Dutch tape. The lycée where I taught happened to offer Dutch as a language option, so I introduced myself to the teacher (a native speaker) and obtained permission to sit in on her beginner, intermediate and advanced classes. My frequent visits to my relatives provided natural contexts in which to practice and plenty of motivation.

By the end of that year, I could communicate effectively, if not fluently, with my few Dutch relatives who could not speak English (the very oldest and the very youngest). The biggest rewards came from finally getting to know my Oma better and being able to go out and run errands with her without necessarily needing my Opa around to translate. Naturally, she was as thrilled as I was with this development.

Of course, once I was back in Canada, I stopped using my Dutch. A year later, Opa and Oma flew in for a visit, and I went to meet them at the airport. When Oma began to tell me about their trip, I was horrified to discover that I had no idea what she was saying. I simply couldn’t follow her anymore. She, too, looked crestfallen, and I wondered whether all my efforts had been futile.

I needn’t have worried. When I returned to the country a few years later, it took only two or three days of real immersion to “unlock” most of what I had absorbed of the language. It had simply gone dormant in the interim. What a relief!

I once stumbled on a blog post by Tim Ferriss called “Reactivating Forgotten Languages: How to Catch Up.” His premise is that it is not necessary to “keep up” with languages that you use only occasionally; you can always “catch up” by giving yourself a shot of exposure just before you need it. This certainly reflects my experience.

I now know that most of my Dutch will come back on
its own a few days into a trip to the Netherlands.
However, sometimes it’s nice—or even necessary,
depending on whom I see when—to hit the ground
running.  Partly inspired by Ferriss and partly by Susan,
I have picked up the habit of buying a new
Harry Potter book in Dutch translation every time I visit
(generally once every two to four years). I don’t read it
right away; instead I wait for the month before my next
trip is scheduled. I already know the story, so I don’t
struggle with the narrative, and the process of reading
“wakes up” all those useful verbs and prepositions,
allowing me to start stringing sentences together upon
arrival. I still improve over the first few days, but I
get to skip that feeling of paralysis. I have twice put
this technique into practice successfully, and Harry Potter en de Gevangene van Azkaban is now sitting patiently on my shelf, waiting for me to book my next ticket...

Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism

My post about my year abroad in Istanbul is part of the most recent Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, hosted by Sarah Lafayette on her blog, Bringing Up Baby Bilingual.  The Blogging Carnival is a wonderful way to connect with other parents, educators, and students of languages.  For more information on the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism and upcoming Carnival topics, please see founder Letizia's Bilingual For Fun blog.

A Year at the Center of the World

My parents gave me many wonderful gifts, but among the top few--right up there with breastfeeding me, having a happy marriage, trusting me to make my own decisions, and putting me through the Canadian French immersion system--is the trip we took to Turkey as a family the year I turned fourteen.

We lived on the European side of Istanbul, not far from Taksim Square, and my younger sisters and I attended Lycee Pierre Loti, a school created to educate French children left behind in Turkey during the Second World War.  It was an ancient building, having been, before the Lycee was founded, a French Capuchin seminary in the business of training priests for the Greek, Syrian, Chaldean, and Armenian rites of the Catholic church.  My mother had had to fight to get us in, because, since we were mere Canadians--and Anglophone Canadians at that--our French surely wouldn't be good enough.  We were slightly worried they might be right when the application forms mysteriously demanded, "Do you sleep with your mouth open?"  We got in and I did have trouble--for about a week, after which I picked up the accent and eventually made it onto the honor roll.

That school did great things for my French and also seriously improved my German, which up to that point had been picked up from a year of Saturday school, another year of night classes, and a few months of tutoring.  My classmates took English as their third language (fourth for the 50% or so of the students who were Turkish), and a few spoke it well.  During English class I was allowed to sit and read my own English books; I had a reading list for ninth-grade English from my school at home and had added some titles related to our travels (we were reading The Iliad as a family, for instance).

Since we went to school in French, we didn't learn to speak Turkish fluently during our year in Istanbul. We did learn enough vocabulary and basic phrases to get along in Turkish at the markets, the banks, and the stores.  Some things we learned from the Foreign Service Institute Turkish Basic Course that my father had bought (I was mainly the one who sat with the heavy paperback book and listened to the tapes, and then I drilled my parents and sisters until they got the pronunciation right--I'd always had a good ear for languages), but most we picked up from reading the signs in the stores and bazaars and listening to the shopkeepers and vendors and the other customers.

I do regret that we didn't study Turkish more intensively and more formally when we had the chance to use it every day, but even the small amount that I picked up was valuable: for one thing, it was my second significant exposure to a non-Indo-European language and therefore expanded my understanding of how human languages work, which certainly made it easier for me to pick up other languages later.

The cultural education that I got during my year abroad was far more interesting and more important than  anything that I could have learned in school.  Seeing how people live in another country--but especially a country as different from Canada and the United States as Turkey--changed my life profoundly.  I can't possibly explain how in a short blog post, but some of the little things that stick in my mind, even eighteen years later, are the old men strolling along Istiklal Caddesi, the famous shopping street, with their friends, holding hands; the running water in our apartment being shut off twelve hours a day (we had to light the hot-water boiler with a match), my piano teacher's enormous Turkish rug and the servant who brought us tea before the lesson; the stray cats and dogs that haunted the streets and courtyards at night, and the people who fed them and cared for them; the way the poorest people smiled a lot more than the richer ones; the briefcases full of cash left casually on the sidewalk outside shops while their owners bought meat and bread on the way home from work; the stares that I elicited from walking around bare-headed in some of the provincial towns; the call to prayer broadcast from the minarets five times a day; the trucks painted in brilliant floral designs; the fruits and vegetables in the markets arranged with exquisite precision.  And of course our visits to Troy and Pergamon and Gallipoli and Hattusha were a history course unlike any other.

I learned that there no one culture has a monopoly on beauty, happiness, or knowledge and that a fresh perspective can improve any situation.  I learned that the way my Canadian classmates dressed was not the only way to dress, that their interests and prejudices should not limit my interests and understanding.  I learned that I should not judge other countries and cultures by what I heard on the news.  And I learned that the way I was perceived by the people I'd grown up with was not the only way I could see myself.

I hope that before my children grow up and leave home, I will be able to give them the gift of a year (or two or three) abroad and that it will have as positive an effect on their lives as it did on mine.

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This post is part of the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism.  Learn more about the Carnival and how you can participate by visiting the Carnival founder's blog, Bilingual for Fun.  Check out the most recent Carnival posts by visiting the host blog, Bringing Up Baby Bilingual.

ACCENT ON DUTCH, by guest blogger Francie Gow

My Dutch accent has progressed in fits and starts rather than gradually. The musical training surely helped here too, as did the early exposure to the sounds from hearing my mother speak with Dutch-speaking friends and relatives. However, there were a few sounds particular to Dutch that I could recognize but had trouble imitating for a long time, as I was not forced to try very often.

The first difficult sound I remember conquering was the rolled “r”. When I was eight years old, I spent a week or two with my great-aunt and great-uncle on the family farm in Netterden. Their four sons had learned English in school, so I generally communicated in English through them. They had a lovely dog named Bonnie who could do entertaining tricks, like rolling over or jumping up to push the door closed. I was eager to give her these commands myself, but she simply ignored me when I encouraged her to “rollen” with my wimpy English “r”. I practised and practised making motor noises with my tongue. A few days later, I knew I had finally succeeded when she heard me say “rrrrrrollen” and promptly did a little flip. I could not possibly have found a more exacting—or motivating—teacher.

When I finally decided in my early twenties to learn to speak Dutch, I set about conquering the last of the challenging sounds with the help of taped language lessons and by asking for help from my relatives every time I went to visit. While my Dutch accent today is not nearly as good as my French accent, the head start that I had acquired in childhood helps me sound much more advanced than the relative beginner I really am.

Basically, I can pass for a native speaker, or at least a proficient one, for the first thirty seconds of any conversation. The disadvantage is that whenever I ask for something in a store, I get a long, detailed answer in rapid-fire Dutch. I quickly learned the phrase, “Langzamer, alstublieft!” (More slowly, please!), and I use it constantly.

The advantage is that native speakers are less likely to switch into English to “help” me, thus giving me more opportunities to practise and improve. On a recent trip to The Hague, my partner and I wanted to reserve a guided tour at the Peace Palace. I dialled the number in the guidebook and began the conversation with “Goeden dag. Spreekt u Engels?” (Good day. Do you speak English?) The man at the other end answered, in Dutch, “Yes, of course I do, but I don’t think I will; your Dutch is much too good!” Totally caught off guard, I stammered my way clumsily through the rest of the conversation. However, it did the job, and he congratulated me warmly before hanging up.

Don’t despair if your child’s early exposure to a language is inconsistent at best; it may still facilitate future efforts!

ACCENT ON FRENCH, by guest blogger Francie Gow

I may not be able to fool everybody all the time, but my French accent is finally good enough to allow me to blend in with the Francophones around me. Actually, it would be more accurate to say my French accents, as I find myself adjusting to the environment depending on whether I am in Quebec or in France.

I don’t think I was born with a particular talent for accents; I simply had and found the right opportunities. When I was four years old, my parents signed me up for violin lessons, and my musical education continued through my early university years. I also taught some violin in my late teens and early twenties. The sense of pitch I developed while tuning all those tiny violins before each beginner fiddle class has helped me hear and imitate the nuances of spoken French. I have no doubt that Susan’s background in piano has contributed to her own ease in distinguishing the sounds of new languages.

I was also fortunate to have been taught in my early years by several native French speakers, mostly from Quebec, as well as by Anglophones who had previously spent a significant amount of time in French environments. When I later taught English conversation courses in France, I could hardly blame the students for speaking English with such thick French accents; most of their teachers did too!

After high school, I spent summers in French-language programs in Quebec, studied French at Memorial University (one of my most helpful courses there was in French phonetics—I highly recommend glancing through the guide to phonetic symbols that appears in the front of any good dictionary), lived and worked in France for a year, studied translation and worked as a French-to-English translator in Ottawa, and then studied law in a bilingual program in Montreal. As I mentioned in my first post, I also fell for a handsome Francophone while in Ottawa and am now fully integrated into his French-speaking family.

In other words, with some help from those early advantages I mentioned, I have developed my accent through a slow and steady evolution, and through thousands of hours of listening and speaking. My only regret is that I have no memory of how I sounded at various stages of my French-language development. I wish I had recordings of myself speaking French in primary school, at the end of high school, after my French degree, and again just after my return from France. If your child is learning a language that he or she does not already speak natively, you may want to squirrel away some samples now to play back at a later date.

Issues in Chinese Librarianship: Collection Development and Access for Children and Families: An Annotated Bibliography

The goal of this bibliography is to present a core of scholarly articles detailing some of the basic issues relevant to Chinese librarianship in North America, with a focus on service to families and children. 

The nineteen articles in this bibliography have been chosen to provide North American librarians new to Chinese librarianship a broad overview of the main problems and controversies that they are likely to face in working with Chinese collections and attempting to provide the best possible service to children and families in that context. 

Since this is a rapidly developing field of inquiry, only articles written in the 1990s or later have been included; six of the nineteen articles were written in the last two years, and most (fifteen out of nineteen) were published in the year 2000 or later.

The authors discuss representations of Chinese people and Chinese culture in literature for children, the appropriation of Chinese narratives in mainstream American fiction, the current status of the Chinese publishing industry, service to Chinese-speaking children and families, cataloging and retrieval issues, and the role of new technologies in improving access to online and print resources.

In 2000, nearly 3,000,000 people in the United States identified their ethnic background as being wholly or partly Chinese.  After India, China provides more graduate students to U.S. universities than any other foreign country (Werling, 2009).  It is therefore crucial for North American librarians to pay more systematic attention to serving Chinese and Chinese-American patrons and communities in their institutions.

Recent Chinese immigrants may be unfamiliar with North American school and library conventions.  In China and other Asian countries, for instance, school lessons consist mostly of rote learning (Ho, 1990), and Chinese students may be accustomed to more structured lessons and may be less comfortable than American students with asking for help or expressing their needs and opinions (Werling, 2009).  Libraries also tend to be very different from their American counterparts (Werling, 2009) and to be used mostly for studying for tests, working on homework, and socializing rather than for pleasure reading or borrowing books (Ho, 1990).  Therefore, providing the best possible service to Chinese immigrants and their children in North American libraries may involve working to understand and sometimes modify different perspectives on the role of the library in families’ lives.  Orientation programming may help to acclimatize families to the way that North American libraries work.  “If the parents are better oriented to a new culture,” Werling (2009) points out, “they will be able to help their children adapt and cope better (p. 45).

Criteria for judging the “quality” of resources for child and adult audiences may be somewhat different for those who are limited by a language handicap (Ho, 1990), whether as Chinese immigrants looking for information in an English-speaking library environment or as Anglophone learners of Chinese as a second or foreign language.  And those who are not proficient in English may have difficulty understanding what is said during library tours and other library events (Werling, 2009).

Asian Studies departments in academic libraries have recently become important sources of information and pleasure reading for recent immigrants, and some big-city public library branches have recently been developing extensive Chinese collections.   For example, the Chinese Heritage Collection and Chinese language materials held by the Chinatown Branch of the Chicago Public Library form about one-half of the branch’s adult collection and about one-tenth of its children’s collection (Werling, 2009); the Queens Borough Public Library in New York City a 93,000-item collection of Chinese resources, WorldLinQ software that provides Web access and native-language searching capabilities to patrons speaking Asian (and other) languages, as well as services that include cultural arts events and coping skills programs for new Americans and a commitment to recruiting staff with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Strong, 1998).  But overall there is a need for academic, public, and school libraries to focus more systematically on providing Chinese resources and services for families and children and on improving access to those resources and services.

Recent immigrants are not the only user groups for Chinese collections in North American libraries, of course.  The diverse populations served by these collections also include scholars in Asian-studies programs and other academic departments such as linguistics, economics, business, comparative literature, history, library and information science, and education; second-, third-, and fourth-generation Chinese Americans and people of mixed ethnic/racial background with widely varying levels of Chinese-language proficiency and connection to Chinese culture; adoptees whose families may know little about Chinese language or culture but want to give their children a connection to their ancestral homeland; and non-Chinese children and adults studying Chinese as a world language or simply wishing to learn a little about Chinese or Chinese-American culture as part of a general multicultural education. 

This brief bibliography is in no way comprehensive but serves as a brief introduction to the problems of Chinese librarianship for those new to the field and particularly for those serving children and families.  Chinese is now the language with the largest number of native speakers in the world and the third most commonly spoken tongue in both the United States (after English and Spanish) and Canada (after English and French), and it is hoped that this situation will be reflected in the collections of more North American libraries in the near future.  Collection-development librarians in public, school, and university libraries will need to familiarize themselves with the problems involved as well as with the growing number of books and other resources that are available.  

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE.

CITATION INFORMATION:

Siu, Susan C. H.  (2009).  Issues in Chinese Librarianship: Collection Development and Access for Children and Families: An Annotated Bibliography.  Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/issuesinchineselibrarianship.

Article on Less-Commonly-Taught Languages Featured in Language Lizard Newsletter

Please check out my article on less-commonly-taught languages (a modified version of an earlier blog post) in the June 2010 issue of the Language Lizard newsletter!

A TALE OF TWO KINDERGARTENS, by guest blogger Francie Gow

About a month after I began French-immersion Kindergarten, my Dutch grandmother died, and my mother brought me and my sister Emily to the Netherlands to spend two months with Opa. While we were there, the grownups decided to send me for part of that time (two or three weeks, perhaps) to the local school. The teacher graciously accepted me as a guest in her classroom and asked the other students to make me feel welcome. 

I have no memory whatsoever of my first month in the French Kindergarten. I presume that we were all taught the phrase “Puis-je aller aux toilettes?” (May I go to the bathroom?) on day one. We were all Anglophones, so although the teacher never used any English with us, I know that she would have used very simple sentences, lots of repetition, and plenty of contextual clues to help us along.

I do, however, have a vivid first-person recollection of parts of my Dutch experience, perhaps because it was so overwhelming. I remember an enormous sense of frustration at not understanding what was going on around me. The adults spoke to me in English and to each other in Dutch. The teacher spoke to the class as a whole in a Dutch that I could not hope to follow, as of course she was aiming it at native speakers, and then she would give me a brief explanation in English so that I could join in the activity. My classmates spoke to each other in Dutch, and to me in slower Dutch accompanied by gestures.

Had I stayed longer, I would have eventually cracked the code and become quite fluent, progressing much faster than I later did in French. I did acquire a large stock of vocabulary words over those two months, mostly related to food, a topic that came up several times a day. However, with the exception of “Ik ben Francie” (I am Francie), which was printed on one of my t-shirts, I never learned to produce a single sentence.

Because the adults were continuing to speak to me in English, no doubt at my insistence and because it was easier, I had no way to pick up verbs, an essential building block for meaningful communication. Therefore, even as my vocabulary grew, I never felt any closer to being able to speak when the time came to return home.

Of course, we all knew that the trip was temporary, so while the grownups no doubt hoped that I would benefit from the exposure to an extent, learning the language was not the primary purpose of my time there. It may have been different if we knew that I would be staying. I imagine that simple story books, read to me repeatedly by patient adults, would have granted me the entry into sentences that I so badly needed to be able to burst through the wall of incomprehension. A strong desire to make friends with my non-English-speaking classmates would have pushed me from there.

While I don’t remember my first days of Kindergarten, I do remember the first days of my return to the French-language classroom in December. In theory, French should have been even less comprehensible to me than Dutch, as there had been no previous exposure to French in my home. However, my only memories of the rest of Kindergarten relate to my classmates and the things we did. I remember learning that I could use the black crayon to make grey by pressing lightly instead of hard. I remember tossing beanbags through holes in a wooden board with a clown painted on it. I remember counting to one hundred. I remember building structures with blocks and pasting macaroni to construction paper. I remember singing songs. I do not remember the fact that I was doing all of this in French.

I recently asked my mother what she remembered from my Kindergarten experience. She told me that a friend of hers had once asked me whether I had learned any French at school that day and was surprised when I replied, “No.” But wasn’t I in French immersion? I looked at her as though she had just said something nonsensical. “We don’t learn French at school,” I explained, “we just speak it.”   

BUNNIES, BROOMS, AND DUTCH VOCABULARY, by guest blogger Francie Gow

I have memories from before starting school of a few Dutch-language books around the house. There were Tintin comic books in Dutch translation, but I could never do much with those beyond looking at the pictures. (I should ask my parents whether we still have them, as I might be just at the right stage for them now!) The simple vocabulary and picture books were more useful.

My sharpest memory is of a Dutch translation of Richard Scarry's The Best Word Book Ever, with its household and community scenes inhabited by cute little human-like animals and labelled in great detail. I had the original English copy as well, so I could compare if I wanted to, but it wasn’t really necessary. I would spend lots of time poring over the pictures, and some of the vocabulary just stuck.

I remember visiting the family farm in the Netherlands when I was eight years old and “playing house” with the neighbour’s daughter, who was the same age. Despite the language barrier, we were able to build an open floor plan out of bales of hay, and we did lots of gesturing to make ourselves understood. I wanted a broom to sweep up the bits of hay, and I was proud as punch when I suddenly remembered the word “bezem” from the Richard Scarry book, and she understood me right away. Using a word successfully in context was an encouraging thrill.  If Scarry’s books were translated into Dutch, I have no doubt they were translated into several other languages as well, so these may be worth hunting down in children’s bookstores on your travels. 

Not all of my books were translations. I still love the bold, colourful illustrations of Dick Bruna, whose iconic Nijntje Konijntje (“Miffy the Rabbit” in English) character is recognizable far beyond the artist’s native Netherlands. I have only just now discovered these adorable interactive Miffy websites, which of course were not available to complement the books when I was growing up. There is even a version in Japanese. Like the Scarry books, I’m certain that the books themselves are available in many more than just these three languages. They may be even easier to find: Bruna began publishing children’s books in 1953, but, unlike Scarry, he still seems to be at it today!

FRENCH IMMERSION AND BEYOND, by guest blogger Francie Gow

I first met Susan in 1982 when our parents enrolled us in the first French immersion class to be offered at our primary school in St. John’s, Newfoundland. We quickly became inseparable, no doubt because of our shared love of language and wild imaginations, and we remained close even after her family moved away in high school. Like Susan, I took to French immersion like a duck to water, despite the fact that our parents did not speak French.

My Dutch-born mother lives primarily in English, her second language, and she came away from her psychology degree with a firm belief in the benefits of second-language learning for children’s brain development.

My father was brought up in Ontario speaking only English, but a commitment to pan‑Canadian bilingualism was really taking off in those latter years of Pierre Trudeau’s leadership, and Dad wanted to make sure that I had the opportunities that came with speaking both of the country’s official languages.

My mother had intended to teach me Dutch at home, and, though I do not remember this, I even had a Dutch-speaking nanny for a while. However, when I was 20 months old, my sister Emily was born with severe cerebral palsy, and my parents’ priorities naturally turned to her rehabilitation.

After graduating from high school, I built on my French in a variety of ways, culminating in a graduate degree in French-to-English translation. While studying in Ottawa, I met the love of my life, a French-speaking Ontarian who speaks near-perfect English and very good Spanish, and who also happens to be the son of two marvellous English-to-French translators.

I am now a legal translator in Montreal, and French is the language I speak most often both at home and at work. I recently realized that my parents’ early decision to facilitate my learning of French has defined almost every aspect of my adult life.

In future posts, I will go into more detail about my experience in learning French, which Susan has labelled a commonly taught language. I also have some experience learning a less-commonly taught language, as I decided to make a real effort to learn Dutch in my early 20’s. I am by no means fluent, but I can now communicate with members of my extended family who do not speak English, and I feel much more connected to my family history. 

Of course, this blog is called LinguistKids. Although I never learned to produce any Dutch as a child, I will explore how some of my early exposure to the language supported my later efforts to acquire it.

Thank you for inviting me to contribute, Susan, and I look forward to chatting with you all in this space!  

Guest Blogger Francie Gow to Write a Series of Posts for LinguistKids

I am happy to announce that my childhood friend Francie Gow will be writing a series of posts for LinguistKids this summer.  Francie went through the French immersion program in Newfoundland and now works as a legal translator in Canada.  She is a brilliant and multi-talented linguist and writer who has travelled widely and used her language skills in a variety of personal and professional contexts.  I am honored to have Francie share her insights on the LinguistKids blog!

Review of Play & Learn Chinese with Mei Mei 1

Review of Play & Learn Chinese with Mei Mei 1, produced by Mei Mei Hu.  North Providence, Rhode Island: Mei Mei & Me, 2006.  41 minutes


For parents like me who don't buy into the showy vacuity of "educational" network shows like Dora the Explorer and Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, Mei Mei Hu's old fashioned calmness and authenticity will come as a breath of fresh air.  The first DVD of eight (so far) in her Play & Learn series is low-tech, slow, and didactic by current videographic standards but is thoughtfully organized and extremely effective an as educational tool.  


Mei Mei Hu understands children.  Youngsters who are young enough or sheltered enough not to have been too frequently exposed to the hysterical pace of twenty-first century children's programming will recognize Mei Mei--who reminds me in some ways of the immortal Fred Rogers--as a gifted, caring, and intelligent teacher who respects them as equally smart, capable, well-intentioned human beings.  Toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy learning real Chinese phrases and vocabulary from Mei Mei and will soon be singing along with the simple, catchy, traditional tunes that she introduces.


The program is divided into eight short segments, each of which contains just the right proportion of repetition and novelty to hold children's attention while ensuring that they remember what they have learned.  The choice of vocabulary also lends itself to reinforcement by parents and teachers in everyday home and classroom situations.  Topics covered include Numbers, Parts of the Body, Actions, Greetings, Family, Names, and Ages.


Most of the program segments follow a fairly predictable sequence in which Mei Mei presents new vocabulary twice, very clearly and slowly; the English translation appears on the screen the first time.  One or two children, who do not seem to be native speakers of Chinese but who do pronounce the words clearly and correctly, then recite or demonstrate the same words and phrases a couple of times.  In later segments, the children perform dialogues that would be easy to reproduce in a kindergarten or Saturday-school setting.  Parts IV (Games) and IX (Songs) introduce a wonderful variety of memorable tunes, along with games and drills to help parents and teachers teach and reinforce them.


If your children are learning Chinese, this is a fundamental program to include in your home or school DVD library.  Recommended for ages 1 to 6.

Review of Gordon & Li Li Learn Animals in Mandarin

Gordon & Li Li Learn Animals in Mandarin, by Michele Wong McSween, illustrated by Nam Doan.  McWong Ink, 2010.   $9.99  ISBN 978-0-9820881-2-8

Michele Wong McSween's bright and colorful "Gordon & Li Li" board books are simple enough to be enjoyed by the youngest babies but will also hold the attention of active preschoolers.  

The first book, Gordon & Li Li: Words for Everyday, was illustrated by Kevin Murawski, who has also done some "Harold and the Purple Crayon" board-book spinoffs.  In that book McSween introduced Gordon & Li Li, blue and pink panda cousins who live in Brooklyn, New York, and Beijing, China, respectively.  Each page featured a simple, straightforward drawing of one or both pandas posing with an everyday object.  The English word was printed at the top of the page and the Chinese word in pinyin transcription at the bottom.  The words chosen ranged from "ball" to "bath" to "apple" to "shoes" to "cell phone," and a couple of phrases--"Good job!" and "See you next time!" were introduced at the end of the book.  Altogether, 26 words and phrases were included, which seems to be a perfect number to fit the attention span of a busy toddler and to allow both child and parents to remember everything with repeated readings. 

McSween's brand-new sequel, Gordon & Li Li Learn Animals in Mandarin, released on March 1 of this year, is even more charming and better conceptualized than the first book.  The new illustrator, Nam Doan, has added an element of humor to the pictures that leaves my nearly-four-year-old son rolling in the aisles time after time.  Instead of merely posing smilingly in each illustration, Gordon & Li Li are active and have more personality in this book.  Li Li squats on a lily pad with the frog, charms the snake, and waddles with the chicken, while Gordon leads a family of ducklings on a walk, sunbathes with an alligator, and chews a blade of grass with a cow.  

The text, still limited to one word per page, is also more useful to Chinese-language learners in this new book.  As well as the English and pinyin versions of each word, the author has included simplified characters (the words range from one to three characters each) and an English-based phonetic transcription of the Mandarin pronunciation.  For someone like me who is trying to learn Chinese characters and teach them to my children, I was very grateful to have both the pinyin and characters for each word.  The English phonetic transcription is not necessary for my purposes, but they may be helpful to readers who are not familiar with the conventions of pinyin, including even some native speakers of Chinese dialects, such as my husband, who does not remember how to read characters and never learned pinyin as a child.

Young children will be charmed by the bold, bright colors and amusing images of this book and will ask to read it again and again.  It is simple enough that, after a few readings, they will be able to start supplying the Chinese words themselves and to feel a sense of pride at having learned some real Chinese, which will motivate them to learn more and to develop their tolerance for longer, more complicated Chinese-language or bilingual books.  Recommended for ages 0-6.